– Salma Ahmed Farooqui

University campuses today are a training ground for tomorrow’s young generation. Not only do they instil academic rigour and make the student self-sufficient in facing the world and attaining good employment, they also need to carve out the personality of an individual. There are students who come from various backgrounds, castes, religions, locations etc which form the basis of a heterogeneity which we should recognise and respect. We should recognise various aspects of this heterogeneity and diversity and respect them. It’s not just young women who face discrimination; it’s even the young men.  It has often been seen that those who come from rural areas into an urban set up often lack the confidence to talk to persons of the opposite sex. They remain confined to themselves or to small groups of friends from the same village/town or linguistic group until they are successful in breaking the ice with other peers with whom they would be spending a considerable amount of time in the coming days.  Until these bonds of friendship develop, there is a teeming insecurity, lack of confidence, a sense of deprivation and a feeling of restlessness. Apart from the interim period public places can have hostility and discrimination of all kinds: young women often become the object of ridicule and of male jokes—they are treated as an inferior sex; young men feel hesitant to talk freely to girls; junior staff feels threatened by insidious remarks made by seniors and women staff members quietly clamour treatment on par with their male colleagues. In recent times, the formation of anti sexual harassment committees at workplace has definitely helped in curbing these feelings to a large extent.
The Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) upholds the dignity of every employee working in the institution and fosters growth through creating a positive and congenial work environment. Sexual harassment at workplace has been identified as one of the areas by the university where the employees need to be protected for her or his personal and professional development. The University has played a dynamic role in stimulating an amiable and cordial atmosphere by taking a positive step in this direction with the formation of PADASH (Prevention against discrimination and sexual harassment), the anti-sexual harassment committee that has been constituted at MANUU. The Committee consisting of seven members comprising both women and men has representation of the members from across all staff cadres appointed for a period of three years. Soon after being constituted, the Committee members carefully drafted the policy on sexual harassment at the work place. Since MANUU has become home to a large section of Muslim community, who come from the socially, economically and linguistically disadvantaged sections of society, the rules and regulations that were drafted had to be in such a way that it would not hurt anybody’s sensibilities and at the same time protect everyone’s interests. A lot of time was spent by the Committee to finalize the rules after which the document was placed before the Executive Council of the University for approval. The policy has been drafted as per the Supreme Court guidelines of the Vishakha Judgment.
The policy is applicable to all employees (females and males) and also to third parties associated with the university. The PADASH committee formed by the institution endeavours to undertake preventive action and also acts as a grievance redressal body where complaints of sexual harassment at the work place are heard. The operational definitions of many terms dealing with sexual harassment have been defined by the committee in the document which are referred to while dealing with the complaints. Since taking of preventive action also comes within the purview of the university, efforts have been made by the PADASH Committee to undertake preventive action through conducting gender sensitization workshops, organising lectures, forming of a human chain for dignity and poster and painting competitions for employees and students at all levels. The PADASH committee found it very useful to align itself on some occasions with the National Social Service team at MANUU to bring about this awareness. The outreach of the programme and the impact it had was found to be much more.
While dealing with cases, the PADASH Committee maintains strict confidentiality during the investigation. The committee ensures that no other individuals should know of the complaint besides the applicant and the witnesses, if any, brought in by the applicant. Investigation is carried out within as short a period as possible. The principal of natural justice is adopted during investigation. Thus both parties, the applicant as well as the alleged offender, are given a platform to produce their respective views of the event and are given a chance to explain their sides.
To cite some specific details of where I work, I would say that it is a beautiful campus with many good people. MANUU is a university with a difference in the sense that it has Urdu as its medium of instruction, hence caters to people who are aspiring to gain higher education through Urdu medium. It is because of this particular mandate that most students and staff need to be familiar with Urdu, a language spoken in most Muslim households. As already cited earlier, there are students coming here from a specific socio-economic background as this is perhaps the first time many Urdu learners have an opportunity to attend a regular university.  This is a new beginning for the families who are taking a bold step by sending the women to a university away from the sheltered confines of home. This is in itself laudable and needs to be supported. We need to empower this bold step taken by first generation learners and their families and it is here as teachers, as non teaching staff and as university authorities we need to step in to provide the maximum comfort and safe ambience for such girls and even boys.
I was appointed as a member of the PADASH Committee two years ago; I can say that it has positively contributed to the building up of a healthy atmosphere.  This cell has a special place in MANUU as it operates within a social system that is conservative and conventional and not yet completely ready to appreciate women as equal stake holders. There are situations which show that the kind of respect women deserve is not given to them. Most girls do not realise the difference between a comment and a compliment. For someone who has heard it for the first time, it can be flattering especially if it comes from a senior person. Sexual harassment does not always mean physical abuse, it can also be verbal, through gestures or veiled references to female anatomy. The more outspoken women employees of MANUU when faced with such situations deal with it directly through retort. The constitution of this cell and the sensitization programmes conducted by it at regular intervals and solving of cases that came before it has brought about an awareness that there will be zero level tolerance towards any kind of sexual harassment. For example, the visit of the task force appointed by the University Grants Commission to the campus and the interaction of its members with various stake-holders promoted a feeling of security and seriousness about gender parity and respect among all sections of the university. This conscious wakefulness has naturally acted as a catalyst of change. The change may sometimes not come from within; it may be forced as it fulfils the mandate for all central government organisations and institutions according to the Supreme Court directive. But the level of security it has promoted within the female students, staff of teaching and non-teaching sections is immense and positive in many ways. Above all, MANUU’s authorities believe firmly in treating women on a par with men, and this is the biggest silver lining on the cloud.   This philosophy has seen many women teachers being appointed to high positions which earlier were restricted only to men.
Salma Farooqui teaches at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.

Extract From Manifesto of Progressive Organization of Women (POW), 1974

The concept of the Indian woman as an equal partner of man and as an active participant in all walks of life has never been so clearly shattered as today. We have, on the one hand, our constitution mouthing pious platitudes about the equality of women, and a few women scattered here and there as leaders, and on the other hand, the terrible conditions of the majority of Indian women…….. Feudal culture preaches to women seclusion at home and restriction from active participation in public life. Increasingly, penetrating foreign culture, on the other hand, has reduced women to nothing more than decorative sex objects. Obscenity in art and literature are rampant. Aggressive male supremacy has led to the sickening practice of eve-teasing and one step further, rape. Some of us are not allowed to work for our own living, while others who work on par with men are not treated on the basis of equal pay of equal work. The position of the housewife is no better. Confined to her home, working form morning to night in back-breaking chores, she has neither independence nor dignity.

Kumar, Radha, The History of Doing: An illustrated account of movements for women’s rights and feminism in India, 1800-1990,Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1993.

 

Safety for women and sexual harassment always starts with a notion of security

          Statement by Dalit Adivasi Bahujan Minority Students’ Association (DABMSA), EFL University Hyderabad

Concerns about sexual violence (especially towards women) seem to be motivated by a certain notion of ‘security’. One of the obvious implications of such a notion is the need to “vulnerablize” and “protect” women. While such notions already, always presume women as ‘inferior’, they also raise significant questions about our imaginations of who perpetrates violence on whom, the spaces where such violences may take place and our “need” to acquire a “secure” space for women, when sexual violence is not something that is solely directed towards a singular gender or sexuality. One must therefore be willing to confront questions of caste, class, culture, religion etc. that complicate the issue of ‘women’s safety”.

When displaced on to realms of administration and institutionalization, regulations and actions taken in order to prevent sexual violence take on repressive forms. Prominent among these are the confinement of women with regard to time and space. The central issue here seems to be the occupation of certain spaces by women. Then, if the resultant solution is to eradicate this presence, then further questions may be raised about established ideas about women, public spaces and work. In spaces such as a Central University, where the dissemination and practice of education is meant to be egalitarian, can such spatial and temporal regulations produce conditions of equality?

A second concern relates to moral dictates on the woman’s body as bearer of tradition; in the form of norms and rules about how a woman should ‘ideally’ dress, especially in public spaces. Are we then to believe that only certain kinds of clothing provoke violence. Actual instances would prove otherwise.

About the coping mechanisms, none of these episodes of harassment happened due to lack of security mechanisms, in the sense that the attitude of society in general to women and especially to the rape victims are at the core of the issue. Whenever a sexual harassment issue is voiced by the media, the responses always induce a certain idea that it was her fault, one way or the other. One of the possible solutions is to bring about a very carefully constructed awareness within the academic spaces along with co-ed mechanisms rather than segregative methods. The active participation of both men and women alike in various academic realms including gender sensitivity is one of the possible long term solutions for this. An important step would be towards the sensitization of men, a need that hardly excites our imaginations.

We need to take in to account the larger social context where factors such as religion, caste, patriarchy are mired in a volatile mix.  We need to be able to rethink our existing understanding and mechanisms in order to apply a form of civility that does not imagine women or men as sites of affiliations—cultural, social, religious etc.— that need to be violated or secured; an understanding that produces modern public spaces as sites of egalitarian occupation.